Amid Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s deprivation barbs against the central Government Bengal — Eastern India — on Sunday got its first air-conditioned Electric Multiple Unit (local suburban train) service which was flagged off from Sealdah Station by Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar. The train will shuttle between Sealdah and Ranaghat station in Nadia district, covering a distance of 76 km.
While Sunday was an inaugural run for the new EMU it will run regularly from Monday, senior officials of the Eastern Railway said adding to it, the suburban “train has 12 fully air-conditioned coaches which are end-to-end vestibule connected.” Until now such EMUs had been operating only in Mumbai and Chennai. Developed by Chennai-based Integral Coach Factory (ICF), the new AC EMU trains promise to be a game changer for suburban train networks of Kolkata and Howrah.
The train will be a “galloping” one — with limited stops, sources said adding it would stop at Chakdah, Kalyani, Kanchrapara, Naihati, Barrackpore, Khardah, Sodepur, Dumdum and Bidhannagar stations en route from Ranaghat to Sealdah, officials said.
Meanwhile a new controversy erupted with Majumdar after the inauguration of the train suggesting a new name for the age-old Sealdah Railway Station after Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, a freedom fighter, a former Union Minister and founder of Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
“If the State Governments sends a proposal to the Centre and the Railway Ministry requesting a name change after Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee we will move the appropriate authorities and get it done,” Majumdar said prompting an immediate retort from the Trinamool Congress.
Senior TMC leader and spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said that though his party had high regards for Dr Mukherjee “who was also the son of great Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee — often pseudonymed Banglar Baagh (Bengal tiger) the first Indian Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University and a former Judge of Calcutta High Court — the Kolkata Port has already been named after him.” “So it will be far greater an idea to rename Sealdah Station after Swami Vivekananda who was not only the resident of this area but also the train bringing him back from (Budge Budge) where his ship anchored returning from Chicago after his historical speech in the world congress of religions.
Sealdah is the place where he disembarked from the train and boarded a chariot which was then pulled not by the horses — along with huge arches and music — but by the youth of Kolkata” ferrying him to his residence, Ghosh said making it clear that the TMC Government was not for naming Sealdah Railway Station after Dr Mukherjee.